GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy released a statement Thursday denouncing a liberal group’s efforts to bar former President Donald Trump from the primary ballot in Colorado.
On Wednesday, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a lawsuit on behalf of six Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters, arguing Trump has “disqualified himself” from running for the White House again, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment states that any person who has “previously taken an oath … as an officer of the United States … to support the Constitution” is disqualified from holding public office if that person engaged “in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
Having tried just about every trick in the book to eliminate President Trump from running in this election, the left is now deploying a new tactic to bar him from ever holding office again: the 14th Amendment. As someone who is now polling in second or third place in most major…
— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) September 7, 2023
Ramaswamy argued that groups like CREW are “attempting to make Trump ineligible to run for president, arguing he fomented and in fact engaged in insurrection on January 6,” adding, “This is a perversion of the 14th Amendment.”
“The 14th Amendment was part of the ‘Reconstruction Amendments’ that were ratified following the Civil War. It was passed to prohibit former Confederate military and political leaders from holding high federal or state office,” Ramaswamy continued. “These men had clearly taken part in a rebellion against the United States: the Civil War. Participants in the events of January 6 did not. And Trump, of course, was not even among them.”
“That makes it all the more absurd that a left-wing group in Colorado is asking a federal court to disqualify the former president on the same grounds, arguing that his stump speeches on and before January 6 equate to rebellion against the United States,” the presidential hopeful added.
Ramaswamy acknowledged “another legal problem” in the group’s lawsuit, saying, “Trump is not a former ‘officer of the United States,’ as that term is used in the Constitution, meaning Section 3 does not apply.”
Citing a Supreme Court case, Ramaswamy said, “An ‘officer of the United States’ is someone appointed by the president to aid him in his duties under Article II, Section 2. The term does not apply to elected officials, and certainly not to the president himself.”
“The Framers of the 14th Amendment would be shocked and appalled to see their narrow provision—intended to bar former U.S officials who switched to the Confederacy from seeking public office—being weaponized by a sitting president and his political allies to prevent a former president from seeking reelection,” Ramaswamy added.
The GOP candidate said, “President Biden and his allies are engaging in election interference of the highest order. Yesterday’s filing is just the latest in a string of baseless lawsuits designed to silence political opponents and swing the election for Joe Biden, this time by depriving Americans of the right to vote for their candidate of choice. The judge assigned to this case should immediately toss it out. Our country is becoming unrecognizable to anyone who understands our Constitution, and we don’t have long to fix it.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “Vivek Ramaswamy” by Vivek Ramaswamy. Background Photo “Voting Booths” by Tim Evanson. CC BY-SA 2.0.
